I believe the X5L and M5L are a little bit smaller than the Gigabeat F40
(which is very similar in size to the H120). Having not handled them
myself, I'm basing this entirely off of "I've heard it's smaller than
the H100 series, and my H120 is similar in size to my F40". The
Gigabeats have 32mb of RAM, but that shouldn't influence your decision
at all. The amount of RAM it has is really only used to buffer audio.
The iAudio players have only 16, but the M5L can get something around
the 40-50 hour mark for battery life on a full charge under ideal
circumstances. As for the durability of their shell, if you're expecting
to put them under stresses where a metal shell is beneficial relative to
a plastic one, you're probably going to end up damaging other more
fragile components such as the drive anyway, I suspect.
Received on 2007-06-24